Prevalence of writing systems argues that writing must be one of the most powerful human instincts. The urge to record and pass on information is universal. Even oral cultures who used memory for transmission generally developed a writing system that supplanted the oral, but books sticks with European and American as title states
Thesis: because writing is something that needs to be taught, we owe it to ourselves to discover how people have been and are teaching this powerful human tool.
Writing principles 1. Must be taught. 2. Is taught in schools (since Roman) school as mechanism
One of Murphy’s goals is to see if instruction changed with teaching environment.
Ch 1. "Ancient Green Writing Instruction" Richard Leo Enos:
writing becomes accessible to the non-elite in Greece and democracy flourishes. (is this right).
Ch1. Ancient Greek Writing instruction. Richard Leo Enos: oral culture, memory vs. writing, alphabet, writing as public ativity, writing and thinking, literacy Progymnasmata as graded comp exercises. Paideia—what it meant to be educated. Homeric rhapsodes—bards who orally transmitted Homer and other poets, wrote down homer to preserve archaic ode language from changing
Syllabaries—sound clusters—not symbols for things.
Sophists, logography, rhetoric
No one read silently—tied to speech, used reading as a recording device at first.
Plato’s objections to writing, Aristotle’s use of writing. Writing as intellectual process. Isocrates curriculum based on talent, education, practice.
Letteraturizzazione process by which features of oral rhetoric are appropriated and applied to writing. Ancients seek systematically taught writing—ala George Kennedy.
“writing provided the conditions under which not just an expert, but a community such as Athens could become literate”
Began to understand writing as heuristic, for preserving and creating new modes of thought and expression.
We are similar to Greeks in our use of literacy and our understanding of it” !
Early Greek children were educated by reading Homer; early ed, oral, musical, athletic.
Writing as a tool to achieve supreme orality only. Instruction tied closely to oral/aural. Alphabet 8-9th C. BCE
Much of credit for integrating higher level writing instruction goes to the Sophists. Becomes public—writing/oratory contests.
5th C BCE shifts from functional tool to heuristic for advanced thought. Music loses emphasis and writing gains status
Isocrates is THE EDUCATOR. For him, writing instructor was an integral part of intellectual growth. But in Against the Sophists, distances himself from their brand of instruction. Writes Antidosis at 82 yrs, after teaching. Writing as a way of coming to understand, with intent of solving social issues. We pursue wisdom eloquence, virtue and justice through writing. Complex curriculum. Picked up by Plutarch later.
Ch 2. "The Key Role of Habit in Roman Writing Instruction" James J. Murphy
Paired writing and speaking were important to the Romans, each supporting the other.
Ch 2. Murphy “The Key Role of Habit in Roman Writing Instruction”
Habit (hexis) roman education as a system, public schools, concept of curriculum, writing and oral language, Quintilian, tutorial teaching, Isocrates’ influence, male-centered education, five parts of Latin rhetoric, Cicero as model, theory and practice, triad of precepts, imitation, practice, inheritance from Greek pedagogy, Grammaticus, Rhetor, seven steps of imitation, form preceding free expression, graded composition exercises, progymnsmata, hermogenes and apthorius, declamation, sequencing, modern criticisms.
Systematized the Greeks ideas, created habit (hexis) network of “public” schools—networks of classrooms. Numerous students in each, each under a master. All used common curriculum! All elements inherited from Greeks, but arrangement by Romans for world wide distribution. Basic principle, students can be habituated in both skill and virtue.
“in writing are the roots, in writing are the foundations of eloquence.” Quintilian
Early Romans incorporated Isocrates’ educational principles and made schools.
More male-centered schools than Greece because society was more male centered and patriarchial.
Five parts of rhet are assumed standard by Cicero in Ad Herennium: invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery.
Quintilian Institutio Oratio 95 AD Famous teacher/professor, compares methods and approaches orator must know all—liberal arts ed. Oral expression still the objective. Insistence on morality.
Pragmatic Romans embraced wide knowledge and Isocrates’s style, not due to philosophy but because it worked.
Exact method is unknown. Textbook .
Habit, habit, habit: habituation is the key
Memorization of topoi and of poetry and prose for imitation.
Cicero defines grammar as the art of speaking correctly; memorization of models strengthens the mind and provides a storehouse of the best words and phrases and figures—Quintilian
Ch 3 "Writing Instruction from Late Antiquity to the Twelfth Century" Carol Dana Lanham
ars dictiminis (letter writing) practical applicaton of writing skills for specific needs of chancery offices and other official bodies; the practitioners of this art wielded great power for centuries, acting as transmitters of messages sent out by popes, kings, etc. IN LATIN
Writing in late antiquity and the early middle ages became the primary transmission mode—Benedictine monks copying manuscripts
Late Antiquity to 12th Century.
Ch 3. Dana Lanham Key concepts: Latin as dominant language, continuity of content and method, role of Christianity, school of reading texts, grammar, rhetoric, progymnasmata, glossaries, differntiae, scholia, exempla, colloquies, teaching anthologies and manuals, narrative sources, wirting instruction, influence of poetry on prose, style and diction, rhythm,
We keep reliving this pattern: Greek, Roman, decline, Greek, Roman, decline
To develop eloquent public speakers and political leaders who could guide the civic life of Rome and empire, Quintilian’s goal carries on.
Chaos intertwining with Christianity, wars, fall of rome, subsequent fall of greek-speaking remainder and Byzantine empire.
Education again comes from tutors and for the few. All instruction in latin, vernaculars in rhet appear 9th C AD.
Spread of Latin has been carried by the vector of Christianity—a religion of The Book. There is a suspicion that rhetoric as pagan—addressed by Augustine—De Doctrina Christiana (427).
Carolingian Renaissance. Charlemagne founds many schools, seeks power through use fo educated clerics, copying of manuscripts in monastic scripture explodes. And interest in classical Latin literature is awakened.
Charlemagne’s foundations will hold.
12th C. Increased commerce and trade. Urban Cathedral schools appear. Papal bureaucracy, need for educated chancery, clerks and lawyers. Revival of study of roman law and canon law. 1st universities founded!
In school, only teacher has book—until 13th C. Grammar texts are there from 3rd C on, verse composition from antiquity to 10th C grammar school. Reading consists of mostly poetry—almost entirely, so texts on meter, terminology, etc.
Artifacts indicate no school instruction on the composition of poetry.
Progymnsamata,
Glossaries, differentia,etc. 4th C. on we begin rules of pronunciation, spelling, etc. some grammar books reference others in notes—intertextuality of sorts.
Narrative sources emerge, biographies of saints, etc. Lives of Saints.
Instruction is slow, thorough, and relentlessly pedantic
Imitation, paraphrase, variation as exercises
Ars Dictainis—medieval art of letter writing—starts with Cicero, but medieval emphasis.
Conclusion of section: 5 parts of rhet were codified in Helenistic times as invention arrangement, style, memory and delivery: goal to speak persuasively. Stylistic and grammatical correctness. All continues in medieval; main change is ars dictaminis—much more emphasis.
Ch 4. "The Teaching of Poetic Composition In the Later Middle Ages" Marjorie Woods
Later Middle Ages; close study of written texts becomes a means of encouraging the composition of poetry in both Latin and the emerging vernaculars.
Later Middle Ages Marjorie Woods: argues that med students were taught verse comp since poetic comp was a distinct genre.
Artes Poetraie, arts of poetry
Matthew of Vendome, prolific poetic treatise on basic verse comp for young.
Gervase of Melkley, smaller portions of difficult works for the young
Suggestiveness of language
Memorization and imitation.
Amplification and abbreviation—student reworking of texts
Geoffrey of Vinsauf
Change in order of five parts of rhet for pedagogical effect
Sensuality for kids, moralizing for adults.
Much like earlier student instruction.
Open minded in choice of reading material but rigid in structural requirements of student composition. Woods thinks this would be effective in modern classroom! Like They Say/I Say.
The theory and practice of Cicero meets the pedagogy of Quintilian in school instruction.
Eloquence in both Latin and vernacular.
Despite printing press oratory, oration remains dominant as do classical teacing methods, imitation unchallenged
Murphy says while renaissance educators condensed and unified, moderns fragment and dilute, departmentalize.
Ch 5. "Rhetoric and Writing in the Renaissance" Don Paul Abbott
Milton is product of Renaissance Ed. Thus biblical and classical. They applied rules of classical oration to all discourse, with domination of poetry and a Christian doctrine.
Renaissance rhet is always argumentative and persuasive, never neutral” Murphy
Women, mostly boys, women educated but even humanists felt they should not be educated in rhetoric because logic is outside woman –Bruni, Leonardo
Revival of classical rhet, English grammar schools, continental and Jesuit colleges, importance of Latin and Greek
Erasmus' De Tatione Studii
Erasmus and Qunitilian
Knowledge of things and words
Latin as living language
Imitation of texts
Elementarie schools
Double translation
Cicero as model
“ Medievals applied logic to religious texts but abandoned classical rehtorics forusionof thought and expression within a unfied cultural and ethical vision of society (civic) said renaissance humanists who looked to return.
English grammar school 16th C. really as we know it.
Aim of eloquence and elegance, like Cicero, lost in middle ages.
Printing press England 1477.
Ong says “oration tyrannized over ideas of what expressions as such, literary or other,was”
Ch. 6 "Writing Instruction in Great Britain: The Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries" Linda Ferreira-Buckley and Winifred Bryan Horner
Social and political changes, politics and religion.
English vernacular vs. London
Writing vs. oratory,
Belles letters
Whately’s “Argumentative Composition”
Dissenting academies
“redbrick universities”
Writing instruction for working people.
Writing instruction in Scotland, wales, Ireland.
Scottish universities on continental plan
Gaelic and Welsh vernaculars discourages
Improvement of female ed: women’s colleges
Salons
Classical languages are increasingly challenged, writing instruction in English evolves in response to social and political and religious and economic developments.
Shift from Latin to vernacular, from oral to literate, to proliferation of books and periodicals
Coffee houses, clubs, societies, literary scenes
Rhetoric lectures attended: Blair and Thomas Sheridan, on proper uses of spoken and written English
Religion and politics merge permanently Jacobite defeat 1746. Many teachers are clergymen. Sermons sell. Non Anglicans face serious educational obstacles in GB
English is national language.
Scots, welsh, Irish vernacular deemed unlearned, vulgar and impediment to British nationalism, banned from classrooms.
Whately in Elements of Rhetoric 1828 moves to writing solidly. Writing NOT to be publicly recited.
Increase in reading public.
Scottish common sense philosophy is very influential while classical rhetoric wanes, but medieval pedagogy is still influential—trivium of grammar, logic and rhet provide solid if tired training during much of 18th c. still memorizing and modeling.
Grammar and writing are bound well into 20th c. Books still expensive.
Oral exams move to written exams
1831 Report to the Royal Commission recommends graded written exercises and examinations.
Still aristocratic and conservative.
Oxford resists change and still studies classically as does Cambridge.
Dissenting academies rebel against Anglican controlled education, against oath of conformity 1559
Dissenters offered superior education—dissoi logi again, conflicting views. Applied progymsmata to writing for its own
no religious test for admission at“redbrick” or new universities founded in London etc. U of London
Goal becomes to educate work force for middle class occupations, to educate adults, but not in Scotland
Illiteracy rampant in whales and Ireland, catholic, worst in Ireland. Newman eventually develops catholic universities, Dublin.
British girls, no matter class, not permitted in high level of ed, only at home. Fear of infertility and insanity. Victorian fear of argumentative wives.
Capitalism expands middles classes, more free time , more readers and writers. Women read for pleasure. Coquette, governesses, finishing schools. Slowly, some women in university and women's colleges.
Ch. 7. "From Rhetoric to Composition: The Teaching of Writing in America to 1900" Elizabethada A. Wright and S. Michael Halloran
Brinsely’s Latin-based writing program for logos; Catherine Beecher’s English Vernacular curriculum for girls
Imitation!
Modern neglect of primary sources.
Conservative oral vernacular curriculum
Rhetoric and “compositions”
Belletristic rhet: Blair Jamieson, Newman
Taste as a new aesthetic
Shift toward personal writing topics
Improved technologies for writing
Rise of middle class
More university students
Importance of “correct” English
Exposition vs. persuasion
Girls and nonwhites
Women as teachers
Writing as a bypass of oratory, forbidden to women
Rhet as composition
Lit vs. rhet
Beecher 18th C says read well,write well. Differs from Brinsely as sees no need to read and write in classical languages. Wants to develop pure English. Not many women educated but is possible.
“much of great value was lost in the evolution from neoclassical rhet of late 18th C. to comp course of late 19th C. –we forget the classics in our lovefest with ourselves—me. Heuristic theory and procedures virtually disappeared, Sense of audience narrowed. Loss of sense of large social purpose for writing, a social role for which rhetorical art was necessary equipment –like Quintilian. Is it because classical rhet requires elitism?
Ch. 8 "A Century of Writing Instruction in School and College English" Catherine L. Hobbs and James A. Berlin
Writing instruction at heart of curriculum—20th C.
Historical neglect of continuity in writing instruction
Writing pedagogy as site of contestation
The new school and college
Rise in school and university populations
Shift from invention to arrangement and style
Literature and liberal cultural ideal
English as new discipline
Reorganization of English in secondary schools (1917)
Self expression as creative writing
Challenges from behaviorism
Challenges from social rhetorics
Historical rhetorics
The new rhetoric
Writing and cognitive process
Personal and linguistic growth
Social epistemic theories
Teacher initiatives
Cultural studies and composition
Computers and technological change.
New School and college
Literature for its own sake 1890s
Economic shift from laissez faire market and individual to managed corporate/govt.
1st. Harvard option Ed and English played part in transition—German research university model with its specialized discliplines and rigourous researched joined economic and social forces to produce new comprehensive university.
Women teach in lower paying humanities and ed civil war to modern
High schools become college prep schools, Harvard is founding center of current traditional rhetoric during last century through textbooks of Adams, Sherman Hill, etc.
Positivistic and rational
Second option: Liberal culture ideal Yale 1890s. Argued that literature ought to be studied for its own sake. Argued for a few geniuses, not education of all. Literature is the only thing to write about—to train leaders, to be distinct, birth and breeding. High Culture.
1900-17 English becomes a discipline: rhet/grammar/literature
High school teachers prep students for work force.
1917 A report to? Reorganization of English. English courses should address social needs and not college requirements.
Creative individual activities in early grades progresses to public social writing in later grades
Idea of genius given an outlet in creative writing courses—postmodern
Dominance of expressive writing, challenged by behaviorists and social rhetorics (Dewey and Scott) anti-intellectualism.
1945-60 “life adjustment” in the schools
New security for lives that have been disrupted less social, less democratic because more about conformity. Historical rhets Burke, Murphy, etc.
1960-75 more corporate
Cognitive process and composing
Learning as “process”
Academics have own structure, not societal
Teaching writing as cognitive process; writing needs discovery, a means of learning—Bruner
1975-85 Reagan, conservative turn. Teaching to tests begins. Writing not measured, so often not taught. Reduction of classroom time given to writing.
Those who did not know how to teach writing were responsible for guiding those who did.
Literacy in crisis
College writing becomes a discipline, becomes remedial 1975-85
Emergence of composition studies, grad level too. Two groups: 1. Cognitive rhetoric paradigm—primacy of cognitive structures in composing argues any study process must begin with an analysis of these structures—intersections writing and computers. 2. Expressionists—Peter Elbow etc emphasize private and personal nature of writing, despite growing emphasis on social nature of learning insist on individual against institutional conformity. Personal as source of all value. Reflection! Study own process!
Renaissance revives Roman educational practices and systematic pairing of oral and written—a means for upward mobility.
English “grammar school” and Jesuit educational programs stress careful writing. English grammar school is exported intact to colonial America and prevails well into the 19th C.
The physical difficulties of writing. Quickness of thought vs. Slowness of writing: fast mind/slow hand
First writing on papyrus—rolled. Not until later antiquity were pieces sewn together at one edge to form a codex (book).
Parchment—vellum—finest parchment very expensive hides of sheep, not for classrooms
Wax tablets. Ancient times to Renaissance—used stylus to scratch.
Paper, very expensive at first China 105AD Europe 12th C.
Printing changed supply and demand
Cheap by lat 19th C. Am. Instruments: stylus, pens of metal, wookd goose uills __required sharpening (pen knife) fountain pen (1880s, leaked) pencil as we know it 1898. Ballpoint pen 1946. Mark Twain first major American writer to use a typewriter
Table of Contents
- Prevalence of writing systems argues that writing must be one of the most powerful human instincts. The urge to record and pass on information is universal. Even oral cultures who used memory for transmission generally developed a writing system that supplanted the oral, but books sticks with European and American as title states
- Thesis: because writing is something that needs to be taught, we owe it to ourselves to discover how people have been and are teaching this powerful human tool.
- Writing principles 1. Must be taught. 2. Is taught in schools (since Roman) school as mechanism
- One of Murphy’s goals is to see if instruction changed with teaching environment.
- writing becomes accessible to the non-elite in Greece and democracy flourishes. (is this right).
- Ch1. Ancient Greek Writing instruction. Richard Leo Enos: oral culture, memory vs. writing, alphabet, writing as public ativity, writing and thinking, literacy Progymnasmata as graded comp exercises. Paideia—what it meant to be educated. Homeric rhapsodes—bards who orally transmitted Homer and other poets, wrote down homer to preserve archaic ode language from changing
- Syllabaries—sound clusters—not symbols for things.
- Sophists, logography, rhetoric
- No one read silently—tied to speech, used reading as a recording device at first.
- Plato’s objections to writing, Aristotle’s use of writing. Writing as intellectual process. Isocrates curriculum based on talent, education, practice.
- Letteraturizzazione process by which features of oral rhetoric are appropriated and applied to writing. Ancients seek systematically taught writing—ala George Kennedy.
- “writing provided the conditions under which not just an expert, but a community such as Athens could become literate”
- Began to understand writing as heuristic, for preserving and creating new modes of thought and expression.
- We are similar to Greeks in our use of literacy and our understanding of it” !
- Early Greek children were educated by reading Homer; early ed, oral, musical, athletic.
- Writing as a tool to achieve supreme orality only. Instruction tied closely to oral/aural. Alphabet 8-9th C. BCE
- Much of credit for integrating higher level writing instruction goes to the Sophists. Becomes public—writing/oratory contests.
- 5th C BCE shifts from functional tool to heuristic for advanced thought. Music loses emphasis and writing gains status
- Isocrates is THE EDUCATOR. For him, writing instructor was an integral part of intellectual growth. But in Against the Sophists, distances himself from their brand of instruction. Writes Antidosis at 82 yrs, after teaching. Writing as a way of coming to understand, with intent of solving social issues. We pursue wisdom eloquence, virtue and justice through writing. Complex curriculum. Picked up by Plutarch later.
- Paired writing and speaking were important to the Romans, each supporting the other.
- Ch 2. Murphy “The Key Role of Habit in Roman Writing Instruction”
- Habit (hexis) roman education as a system, public schools, concept of curriculum, writing and oral language, Quintilian, tutorial teaching, Isocrates’ influence, male-centered education, five parts of Latin rhetoric, Cicero as model, theory and practice, triad of precepts, imitation, practice, inheritance from Greek pedagogy, Grammaticus, Rhetor, seven steps of imitation, form preceding free expression, graded composition exercises, progymnsmata, hermogenes and apthorius, declamation, sequencing, modern criticisms.
- Systematized the Greeks ideas, created habit (hexis) network of “public” schools—networks of classrooms. Numerous students in each, each under a master. All used common curriculum! All elements inherited from Greeks, but arrangement by Romans for world wide distribution. Basic principle, students can be habituated in both skill and virtue.
- “in writing are the roots, in writing are the foundations of eloquence.” Quintilian
- Early Romans incorporated Isocrates’ educational principles and made schools.
- More male-centered schools than Greece because society was more male centered and patriarchial.
- Five parts of rhet are assumed standard by Cicero in Ad Herennium: invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery.
- Quintilian Institutio Oratio 95 AD Famous teacher/professor, compares methods and approaches orator must know all—liberal arts ed. Oral expression still the objective. Insistence on morality.
- Pragmatic Romans embraced wide knowledge and Isocrates’s style, not due to philosophy but because it worked.
- Exact method is unknown. Textbook .
- Habit, habit, habit: habituation is the key
- Memorization of topoi and of poetry and prose for imitation.
- Cicero defines grammar as the art of speaking correctly; memorization of models strengthens the mind and provides a storehouse of the best words and phrases and figures—Quintilian
- ars dictiminis (letter writing) practical applicaton of writing skills for specific needs of chancery offices and other official bodies; the practitioners of this art wielded great power for centuries, acting as transmitters of messages sent out by popes, kings, etc. IN LATIN
- Writing in late antiquity and the early middle ages became the primary transmission mode—Benedictine monks copying manuscripts
- Late Antiquity to 12th Century.
- Ch 3. Dana Lanham Key concepts: Latin as dominant language, continuity of content and method, role of Christianity, school of reading texts, grammar, rhetoric, progymnasmata, glossaries, differntiae, scholia, exempla, colloquies, teaching anthologies and manuals, narrative sources, wirting instruction, influence of poetry on prose, style and diction, rhythm,
- We keep reliving this pattern: Greek, Roman, decline, Greek, Roman, decline
- To develop eloquent public speakers and political leaders who could guide the civic life of Rome and empire, Quintilian’s goal carries on.
- Chaos intertwining with Christianity, wars, fall of rome, subsequent fall of greek-speaking remainder and Byzantine empire.
- Education again comes from tutors and for the few. All instruction in latin, vernaculars in rhet appear 9th C AD.
- Spread of Latin has been carried by the vector of Christianity—a religion of The Book. There is a suspicion that rhetoric as pagan—addressed by Augustine—De Doctrina Christiana (427).
- Carolingian Renaissance. Charlemagne founds many schools, seeks power through use fo educated clerics, copying of manuscripts in monastic scripture explodes. And interest in classical Latin literature is awakened.
- Charlemagne’s foundations will hold.
- 12th C. Increased commerce and trade. Urban Cathedral schools appear. Papal bureaucracy, need for educated chancery, clerks and lawyers. Revival of study of roman law and canon law. 1st universities founded!
- In school, only teacher has book—until 13th C. Grammar texts are there from 3rd C on, verse composition from antiquity to 10th C grammar school. Reading consists of mostly poetry—almost entirely, so texts on meter, terminology, etc.
- Artifacts indicate no school instruction on the composition of poetry.
- Progymnsamata,
- Glossaries, differentia,etc. 4th C. on we begin rules of pronunciation, spelling, etc. some grammar books reference others in notes—intertextuality of sorts.
- Narrative sources emerge, biographies of saints, etc. Lives of Saints.
- Instruction is slow, thorough, and relentlessly pedantic
- Imitation, paraphrase, variation as exercises
- Ars Dictainis—medieval art of letter writing—starts with Cicero, but medieval emphasis.
- Conclusion of section: 5 parts of rhet were codified in Helenistic times as invention arrangement, style, memory and delivery: goal to speak persuasively. Stylistic and grammatical correctness. All continues in medieval; main change is ars dictaminis—much more emphasis.
- Later Middle Ages; close study of written texts becomes a means of encouraging the composition of poetry in both Latin and the emerging vernaculars.
- Later Middle Ages Marjorie Woods: argues that med students were taught verse comp since poetic comp was a distinct genre.
- Artes Poetraie, arts of poetry
- Matthew of Vendome, prolific poetic treatise on basic verse comp for young.
- Gervase of Melkley, smaller portions of difficult works for the young
- Suggestiveness of language
- Memorization and imitation.
- Amplification and abbreviation—student reworking of texts
- Geoffrey of Vinsauf
- Change in order of five parts of rhet for pedagogical effect
- Sensuality for kids, moralizing for adults.
- Much like earlier student instruction.
- Open minded in choice of reading material but rigid in structural requirements of student composition. Woods thinks this would be effective in modern classroom! Like They Say/I Say.
- The theory and practice of Cicero meets the pedagogy of Quintilian in school instruction.
- Eloquence in both Latin and vernacular.
- Despite printing press oratory, oration remains dominant as do classical teacing methods, imitation unchallenged
- Murphy says while renaissance educators condensed and unified, moderns fragment and dilute, departmentalize.
- Milton is product of Renaissance Ed. Thus biblical and classical. They applied rules of classical oration to all discourse, with domination of poetry and a Christian doctrine.
- Renaissance rhet is always argumentative and persuasive, never neutral” Murphy
- Women, mostly boys, women educated but even humanists felt they should not be educated in rhetoric because logic is outside woman –Bruni, Leonardo
- Revival of classical rhet, English grammar schools, continental and Jesuit colleges, importance of Latin and Greek
- Erasmus' De Tatione Studii
- Erasmus and Qunitilian
- Knowledge of things and words
- Latin as living language
- Imitation of texts
- Elementarie schools
- Double translation
- Cicero as model
- “ Medievals applied logic to religious texts but abandoned classical rehtorics forusionof thought and expression within a unfied cultural and ethical vision of society (civic) said renaissance humanists who looked to return.
- English grammar school 16th C. really as we know it.
- Aim of eloquence and elegance, like Cicero, lost in middle ages.
- Printing press England 1477.
- Ong says “oration tyrannized over ideas of what expressions as such, literary or other,was”
- Social and political changes, politics and religion.
- English vernacular vs. London
- Writing vs. oratory,
- Belles letters
- Whately’s “Argumentative Composition”
- Dissenting academies
- “redbrick universities”
- Writing instruction for working people.
- Writing instruction in Scotland, wales, Ireland.
- Scottish universities on continental plan
- Gaelic and Welsh vernaculars discourages
- Improvement of female ed: women’s colleges
- Salons
- Classical languages are increasingly challenged, writing instruction in English evolves in response to social and political and religious and economic developments.
- Shift from Latin to vernacular, from oral to literate, to proliferation of books and periodicals
- Coffee houses, clubs, societies, literary scenes
- Rhetoric lectures attended: Blair and Thomas Sheridan, on proper uses of spoken and written English
- Religion and politics merge permanently Jacobite defeat 1746. Many teachers are clergymen. Sermons sell. Non Anglicans face serious educational obstacles in GB
- English is national language.
- Scots, welsh, Irish vernacular deemed unlearned, vulgar and impediment to British nationalism, banned from classrooms.
- Whately in Elements of Rhetoric 1828 moves to writing solidly. Writing NOT to be publicly recited.
- Increase in reading public.
- Scottish common sense philosophy is very influential while classical rhetoric wanes, but medieval pedagogy is still influential—trivium of grammar, logic and rhet provide solid if tired training during much of 18th c. still memorizing and modeling.
- Grammar and writing are bound well into 20th c. Books still expensive.
- Oral exams move to written exams
- 1831 Report to the Royal Commission recommends graded written exercises and examinations.
- Still aristocratic and conservative.
- Oxford resists change and still studies classically as does Cambridge.
- Dissenting academies rebel against Anglican controlled education, against oath of conformity 1559
- Dissenters offered superior education—dissoi logi again, conflicting views. Applied progymsmata to writing for its own
- no religious test for admission at“redbrick” or new universities founded in London etc. U of London
- Goal becomes to educate work force for middle class occupations, to educate adults, but not in Scotland
- Illiteracy rampant in whales and Ireland, catholic, worst in Ireland. Newman eventually develops catholic universities, Dublin.
- British girls, no matter class, not permitted in high level of ed, only at home. Fear of infertility and insanity. Victorian fear of argumentative wives.
- Capitalism expands middles classes, more free time , more readers and writers. Women read for pleasure. Coquette, governesses, finishing schools. Slowly, some women in university and women's colleges.
- Brinsely’s Latin-based writing program for logos; Catherine Beecher’s English Vernacular curriculum for girls
- Imitation!
- Modern neglect of primary sources.
- Conservative oral vernacular curriculum
- Rhetoric and “compositions”
- Belletristic rhet: Blair Jamieson, Newman
- Taste as a new aesthetic
- Shift toward personal writing topics
- Improved technologies for writing
- Rise of middle class
- More university students
- Importance of “correct” English
- Exposition vs. persuasion
- Girls and nonwhites
- Women as teachers
- Writing as a bypass of oratory, forbidden to women
- Rhet as composition
- Lit vs. rhet
- Beecher 18th C says read well,write well. Differs from Brinsely as sees no need to read and write in classical languages. Wants to develop pure English. Not many women educated but is possible.
- “much of great value was lost in the evolution from neoclassical rhet of late 18th C. to comp course of late 19th C. –we forget the classics in our lovefest with ourselves—me. Heuristic theory and procedures virtually disappeared, Sense of audience narrowed. Loss of sense of large social purpose for writing, a social role for which rhetorical art was necessary equipment –like Quintilian. Is it because classical rhet requires elitism?
- Writing instruction at heart of curriculum—20th C.
- Historical neglect of continuity in writing instruction
- Writing pedagogy as site of contestation
- The new school and college
- Rise in school and university populations
- Shift from invention to arrangement and style
- Literature and liberal cultural ideal
- English as new discipline
- Reorganization of English in secondary schools (1917)
- Self expression as creative writing
- Challenges from behaviorism
- Challenges from social rhetorics
- Historical rhetorics
- The new rhetoric
- Writing and cognitive process
- Personal and linguistic growth
- Social epistemic theories
- Teacher initiatives
- Cultural studies and composition
- Computers and technological change.
- New School and college
- Literature for its own sake 1890s
- Economic shift from laissez faire market and individual to managed corporate/govt.
- 1st. Harvard option Ed and English played part in transition—German research university model with its specialized discliplines and rigourous researched joined economic and social forces to produce new comprehensive university.
- Women teach in lower paying humanities and ed civil war to modern
- High schools become college prep schools, Harvard is founding center of current traditional rhetoric during last century through textbooks of Adams, Sherman Hill, etc.
- Positivistic and rational
- Second option: Liberal culture ideal Yale 1890s. Argued that literature ought to be studied for its own sake. Argued for a few geniuses, not education of all. Literature is the only thing to write about—to train leaders, to be distinct, birth and breeding. High Culture.
- 1900-17 English becomes a discipline: rhet/grammar/literature
- High school teachers prep students for work force.
- 1917 A report to? Reorganization of English. English courses should address social needs and not college requirements.
- Creative individual activities in early grades progresses to public social writing in later grades
- Idea of genius given an outlet in creative writing courses—postmodern
- Dominance of expressive writing, challenged by behaviorists and social rhetorics (Dewey and Scott) anti-intellectualism.
- 1945-60 “life adjustment” in the schools
- New security for lives that have been disrupted less social, less democratic because more about conformity. Historical rhets Burke, Murphy, etc.
- 1960-75 more corporate
- Cognitive process and composing
- Learning as “process”
- Academics have own structure, not societal
- Teaching writing as cognitive process; writing needs discovery, a means of learning—Bruner
- 1975-85 Reagan, conservative turn. Teaching to tests begins. Writing not measured, so often not taught. Reduction of classroom time given to writing.
- Those who did not know how to teach writing were responsible for guiding those who did.
- Literacy in crisis
- College writing becomes a discipline, becomes remedial 1975-85
- Emergence of composition studies, grad level too. Two groups: 1. Cognitive rhetoric paradigm—primacy of cognitive structures in composing argues any study process must begin with an analysis of these structures—intersections writing and computers. 2. Expressionists—Peter Elbow etc emphasize private and personal nature of writing, despite growing emphasis on social nature of learning insist on individual against institutional conformity. Personal as source of all value. Reflection! Study own process!
- Renaissance revives Roman educational practices and systematic pairing of oral and written—a means for upward mobility.
- English “grammar school” and Jesuit educational programs stress careful writing. English grammar school is exported intact to colonial America and prevails well into the 19th C.
- The physical difficulties of writing. Quickness of thought vs. Slowness of writing: fast mind/slow hand
- First writing on papyrus—rolled. Not until later antiquity were pieces sewn together at one edge to form a codex (book).
- Parchment—vellum—finest parchment very expensive hides of sheep, not for classrooms
- Wax tablets. Ancient times to Renaissance—used stylus to scratch.
- Paper, very expensive at first China 105AD Europe 12th C.
- Printing changed supply and demand
- Cheap by lat 19th C. Am. Instruments: stylus, pens of metal, wookd goose uills __required sharpening (pen knife) fountain pen (1880s, leaked) pencil as we know it 1898. Ballpoint pen 1946. Mark Twain first major American writer to use a typewriter
1990-2000Ch 1. "Ancient Green Writing Instruction" Richard Leo Enos:
Ch 2. "The Key Role of Habit in Roman Writing Instruction" James J. Murphy
Ch 3 "Writing Instruction from Late Antiquity to the Twelfth Century" Carol Dana Lanham
Ch 4. "The Teaching of Poetic Composition In the Later Middle Ages" Marjorie Woods
Ch 5. "Rhetoric and Writing in the Renaissance" Don Paul Abbott
Ch. 6 "Writing Instruction in Great Britain: The Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries" Linda Ferreira-Buckley and Winifred Bryan Horner
Ch. 7. "From Rhetoric to Composition: The Teaching of Writing in America to 1900" Elizabethada A. Wright and S. Michael Halloran
Ch. 8 "A Century of Writing Instruction in School and College English" Catherine L. Hobbs and James A. Berlin